Early Britain eBook

[2] He was buried at St. Peter’s, and
his tomb still exists
in the remodelled building.
Baeda quotes the inscription in
full, and quotes it
correctly; a fact which may be taken as
an excellent test of
his historical accuracy, and the care
with which he collected
his materials.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that while
Christianity made great progress, many marks of heathendom
were still left among the people. Well-worship
and stone-worship, devil-craft and sacrifices to idols,
are mentioned in every Anglo-Saxon code of laws, and
had to be provided against even as late as the time
of Eadgar. The belief in elves and other semi-heathen
beings, and the reverence for heathen memorials, was
rife, and shows itself in such names as AElfred, elf-counsel;
AElfstan, elf-stone; AElfgifu, elf-given; AEthelstan,
noble-stone; and Wulfstan, wolf-stone. Heathendom
was banished from high places, but it lingered on
among the lower classes, and affected the nomenclature
even of the later West Saxon kings themselves.
Indeed, it was closely interwoven with all the life
and thought of the people, and entered, in altered
forms, even into the conceptions of Christianity current
amongst them. The Christian poem of Caedmon is
tinctured on every page with ideas derived from the
legends of the old heathen mythology. And it will
probably surprise many to learn that even at this late
date, tattooing continued to be practised by the English
chieftains.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE KINGDOMS.

With the final triumph of Christianity, all the formative
elements of Anglo-Saxon Britain are complete.
We see it, a rough conglomeration of loosely-aggregated
principalities, composed of a fighting aristocracy
and a body of unvalued serfs; while interspersed through
its parts are the bishops, monks, and clergy, centres
of nascent civilisation for the seething mass of noble
barbarism. The country is divided into agricultural
colonies, and its only industry is agriculture, its
only wealth, land. We want but one more conspicuous
change to make it into the England of the Augustan
Anglo-Saxon age—­the reign of Eadgar—­and
that one change is the consolidation of the discordant
kingdoms under a single loose over-lordship.
To understand this final step, we must glance briefly
at the dull record of the political history.

Under AEthelfrith, Eadwine, and Oswiu, Northumbria
had been the chief power in England. But the
eighth century is taken up with the greatness of Mercia.
Ecgfrith, the last great king of Northumbria, whose
over-lordship extended over the Picts of Galloway and
the Cumbrians of Strathclyde, endeavoured to carry
his conquests beyond the Forth, and annex the free
land lying to the north of the old Roman line.
He was defeated and slain, and with him fell the supremacy
of Northumbria. Mercia, which already, under